I went out drinking with Brent Simmons. Everything after that is kind of a blur.

About a year ago, I happened to be flying in to San Jose on business. As the plane touched down, I did what I always do: take my iPhone out of airplane mode. At some point over eastern California, my friend Alex sent an email to myself and Brent Simmons; he had noticed we were both going to be in the area and suggested we meet up. To be honest, I felt terrible that night. I just wanted to go to my hotel and get some sleep.

I had met Brent once before at Ignite Denver, but only briefly. The opportunity to buy the developer of one of my favorite applications a drink was too good to ignore. So I sucked it up and went out.

It just so happened that Brent was in town for 360|iDev, an event organized by a guy named John Wilker, who I sort of knew in passing and — again, by sheer coincidence — had just become my neighbor. Nobody could have said it better than Wilker himself when he walked up to me outside of the eBay Town Hall that night. “Dave? What the hell are you doing here?”

When Brent and I went out, we were joined by Dan Burcaw and Joe Pezzillo — iPhone developers and friends of Brent’s from, of all places, Denver. Jay and I had just launched Coathangr, the social network for fashion, and I asked Dan how much it would cost us to build an iPhone app for it.

He told me that the conversation couldn’t even start for less than twenty grand, and that we’d be better off doing it ourselves. So we did. And we fell in love with iPhone development. And a year later, Dan’s company acquired us. I guess he was right.

Of course, I’m leaving out an entire year’s worth of blood, sweat, education, experience, and perhaps most importantly, failure. I’ll save those for later posts. So part of it was luck, part of it was the truly awesome iPhone developer community, and a lot of it is owed to my generous and patient mentors. But if I had to trace it back to a single decision that changed everything, it would be going to grab that drink.

The lesson here is that when Brent Simmons invites you out, you say yes.

TechCrunch’s coverage is remarkably insightful:

With so many app developers around the Apple ecosystem, it makes sense for smaller iPhone app developers to pool their resources and talent and consolidate. I suspect we may be seeing more acquisitions and mergers in the near future.

Ding.

Careful analysis of the Twitter user experience in the iTunes AppStore revealed massive room for improvement. People are looking for an app from Twitter, and they’re not finding one. So, they get confused and give up.

I would love to know how they came up with that.

Apple joins an exclusive club that includes Exxon Mobil, Microsoft and Wal-Mart Stores. But some analysts are starting to wonder if now may be a good time to sell the company’s stock.

Right before the iPad is released? Those analysts are fucking stupid.

So it’s not too much of a stretch to see Apple’s ad platform in the future being the best way to deliver ads in apps, which might offer perks like, say, location-based targeted advertising, or more dynamic ads than you can do now on an iPhone. It’s also not crazy to think Apple’s way is going to be the only way to get some of those features, like location-based ads.

The point is easy to miss, so I’ll spell it out a bit. Apple’s plan isn’t to remove anyone’s ability to use location data for ads. What Buchanan is suggesting — and the conclusion I came to myself — is that Apple wants to provide those ads themselves.

Rather than pulling ads from any of the countless mobile ad providers, it would be more suited to Apple’s interests for you to get your ads through a framework. Core Advertising, if you will. Developers include a few lines of code and get ad supported lite versions of their apps which conveniently pay out through the same system that cuts the checks for App Store revenue. A single point of payment.

The Gizmodo article also points out Apple’s use of the word primarily. If the only reason you’re using Core Location is to serve ads, you will be rejected. Why? Simple, Apple recognizes the danger of allowing app developers to control overall user experience. Right now, a modal alert pops up when you launch a location-enabled app for the first time. As a user, I see this alert as a layer of privacy protection. My iPhone correctly assumes that I don’t want to share this information with just anyone, and cautions me on a per-app basis.

Now imagine this alert pops for every app.

What Apple doesn’t want is for users to be conditioned to hit OK without consideration, and even less so for users to be inundated with alerts (shades of Windows).

By providing advertising functionality by way of a developer framework, Apple can take a cut of the money, make the process of creating ad-supported apps easier for developers, and distill the user experience down to a single “allow advertising based on your current location” option within settings.

So long as ads not based on location can still be pulled freely from third-parties like Fusion and The Deck, I would view this as a fair compromise.

Assuming a third-quarter ship date, this fruity new wonder could prove to be the hottest item under the Christmas tree. And that means that, come January 2011, IT shops will be inundated with idiot users lobbying to hook their iPads/iSlates/iTablets (iBricks?) into the corporate network.

Using the phrase “idiot users” just threw away what little credibility you had left. It has long been the folly of greasy, surly, under-sexed IT guys to think that the users owed you something. You are there to provide a service. The user is your customer. If you don’t like it, go find another job. The IT guy is not some desirable rock star. You are a commodity, easily replaceable. IT is a cost center, and you aren’t getting paid to be a dick to people.

And those idiot users? There’s a good chance that they’re the ones making the company money.

If the economy means you’re afraid to give your employer an honest evaluation based on this presentation, you’re not a rock star.

You made a “product” to compete with their “product,” tastefully arranging your regiment, only to discover that they hadn’t made a product at all – they made a narrative. A statement about how technology should interface with a life.

See also: the associated comic.

I REALLY HOPE THERE ISN’T ANY NEED FOR FINE PRINT BECAUSE I JUST WANT TO GIVE SOME STUFF AWAY AND HAVE NOBODY RAISE A BIG LEGAL FUSS ABOUT IT ARE WE AGREED THIS IS A GOOD IDEA AND THE LAWYERS DON’T NEED TO GET INVOLVED, AM I RIGHT?

I expect this one to hit #1 quickly.

The question.

First, let’s define “pretty”.

1 a : artful, clever b : pat, apt
2 a : pleasing by delicacy or grace b : having conventionally accepted elements of beauty c : appearing or sounding pleasant or nice but lacking strength, force, manliness, purpose, or intensity

Motorola seems to be implying 2 c. But let’s ignore that for a moment. In the interests of fairness, we shall assume 1 a through 2 b.

Next, we must define “phone”. Does that mean the hardware form-factor? Or are we also including the UI of the operating system? At first glance, it seems Motorola is talking about hardware alone. And who could blame them? This is a company that made truckloads of money selling the RAZR, a phone that looked good for its time but had little to offer in software or user experience. But things have changed, and the level of effort that went into the Droid’s aesthetics suggests that the criteria should include software, itself a condemnation of the question.

Smartphone sales over the last few years are very telling. Palm’s Pre, by way of example, gained a lot of attention for being an elegantly-designed piece of hardware with thoughtful, attractive software and an interesting, consistent user interface mechanism. The interface is designed to be friendly, to be inviting, and perhaps most importantly, to be used. Even RIM, makers of the ultimate suitphone, are exploring touchscreens and cleaner UI (albeit clumsily). This is a dramatic shift for an industry who five years ago was content to shovel flip phones and styluses at us.

The difference is the consumer. We’ve learned that electronics can be more than just cheap plastic and beige boxes. But while most of these shifting platforms are still proprietary, Android stands alone as an open-sourced alternative, made even more interesting by Google’s spearheading of the project.

Software.

Using a flawed-yet-car-free analogy, imagine hiring different contractors to build each room of a house individually. Each has access to the blueprints of the others, and they’re free to collaborate as they wish. But every engineer has their own style and opinions about the right way to do things. What do you expect the end result to look like? Does the house make sense as a whole? Would you want to live in it?

Linux is designed by committee, leading to genetic quirks which have been passed on to Android. In the case of the Droid, Motorola is the interior decorator trying to bring this mess together. They apply branding, they tweak settings, they add some custom applications. Then they try to wrap it all up in an interesting hardware package.

Hardware.

The hardware, like the software, suffers from serving too many masters. We have a touch screen with an on-screen keyboard, but also a slide-out physical keyboard. Every time I’ve held a Droid, I’ve tried to slide the keyboard the wrong direction. I’m sure the engineers at Motorola put a bunch of time and money into studies which led them to their decision on slide-out direction, and this problem would likely go away if I owned a Droid and used it regularly.

Still, why not design a visual or tactile cue which nudges me in the right direction? This is to say nothing of the keyboard itself, unreadable from too many characters per key. There is nothing artful or clever about this design. It is merely acceptable.

Hardware is the gateway to the software. In order to use any of the great features my new device comes with, I have to interact with it physically. If there is a barrier between me and those interactions, however small, my experience is tainted.

Android.

These are some quirks of one Android phone. There are others. The software has to account for these quirks. Touchscreen, multi-touch, no touch, physical keyboard, soft keyboard. Every interface possibility must be considered. And many Android phones get their own custom look-and-feel applied to the UI. When a developer sits down to write an application, they’re presented with all of these options, each requiring its own code, quality assurance testing, and support. For smaller development shops, it’s far too taxing to support every possible option, and we end up with “Android” applications that don’t really work on every android device.

Competition is critical. PC users spent years without compelling alternatives to Windows. A single choice, no matter how interesting for its time, will never benefit users in the long run. The problem with Android is that, like Windows, it competes with itself. Fragmentation on top of fragmentation.

Artful, clever.

Being pretty is about getting the little things right as much as it is about the big things. Good design requires vision. It’s great to have a cool ad campaign with textured graphics and ominous red lights, but how does that vision extend to the user experience? The message I get from the Droid – both marketing and experience – is that it does a lot of things, but none of them particularly well. It doesn’t matter how many apps I can have running at once if none of them are any good.

2 c.

In the end, we have to stop kidding ourselves; what Motorola is really suggesting is that a pretty phone is a girly phone. This is a terrible, terrible mistake, and one that may eventually prove to be the move that killed the Droid. While women aren’t typically the gadget-happy, tech-forward gender, they do drive fashion, and as every nightclub owner knows, men go where the women are.

Like it or not, a cell phone is a fashion accessory. Just as a designer suit or baggy jeans can broadcast volumes about you, so can your phone. The marketing campaign for the Droid has thus far been as much about a competing product as it has been about the Droid. If you want to compete with advertising, I advise against ads which point out how attractive your competition is.

Nintendo’s Wii is a home video game console with a special type of controller that senses motion. Any kind of game can be written for the hardware, but Nintendo made an early decision to build their marketing around the casual gamer. The ads featured families and older people engaged in games like Wii Sports. They were sending a clear message that anyone could pick up a controller and play a game on the Wii. The Wii is for everyone. Nintendo made a lot of money and went from being the number three console manufacturer to number one in a single generation. A large part of their success is due to the quality of the games and the novelty of the experience, naturally, but would they have found such a responsive audience if they had targeted hardcore gamers? If the ads had shown teenagers in a dimly-lit basement surrounded by empty pizza boxes, would the Wii still be a hit across all generations?

Who really buys into this faux-machismo, me-too-but-better attitude? Motorola is targeting men. The kind of men who want to have the manliest phone. The kind of men who want an easily-bragged-about bulleted list of features. And they’re targeting them at the expense of every other demographic.

Should a Phone be Pretty?

The question itself is silly. Of course a phone should be well-designed. Of course a phone should have attractive, easy-to-use software. Of course it should have a natural charisma that appeals to everyone.

Should. But, obviously, these features are not compulsory.

The desperation intensity index is high. A “the iPhone is for fags” commercial can’t be far off.

Now I just need to start charging for software.

That means NBC gets thrown to the lions, and two dying business models — a broadcast TV network and a big dumb cable operator — have found a way to sink faster, by tying themselves together.

The demo was shown on an HP table computer with a touchscreen, but it could easily be ported to an iPhone or an Apple iTablet, whenever that becomes available.

Designed to mimic a format nobody wants on a device nobody is buying, but could easily be ported to a device that doesn’t exist. Sounds exciting!

That is, if you get a BlackBerry, Android or similar phone from Verizon, and you decide to switch phones before your two-year contract is up, you’ll be socked with a $350 penalty (it used to be $175)

What, you thought AT&T was the only phone company out to take every penny they can? With cell carriers, you have your choice between various combinations of incompetence and malice.